M A G N E T O

It’d been a longer time, still, since he’d heard the primary of his two native tongues outside of Europe.  And yet, here he was at the store getting food for Mischa, when he heard the familiar roll of German from further down the aisle.  His eyes immediately cut to the young girl standing at the end of the row, seemingly talking to herself as she stared at the shelves.  

“Du klingst nicht amerikanisch, kleine.”

You don’t sound American, little one.

This had been one of the very reasons that Erik had been reluctant about returning to the United States.  You didn’t even have to be particularly politically aware to have noticed the rise in certain sympathies that ought to have gone out with the last World War.  Nationalism, racial purity, xenophobia.  

Never again, indeed.  And Charles wondered why Erik didn’t trust the humans as far as he could throw them.  

New York was a liberal city, by American standards, even if it was still leagues behind where most of Europe stood, and so he had for several weeks been able to avoid running into anyone vocal about such sympathies.  Today, it seemed, that luck had run out.  

Some sort of rally.  He didn’t care if they had a permit, he didn’t care about America’s little ‘free speech’ rules, he didn’t care about anything about except the despicable slurs dripping from their lips and painted on their signs.  The symbol sewn into their clothes.  

He’s itching to put them in their place, but a woman takes his shoulder before he can even make it two steps toward the nearest man, and he snarls as he turns on her.  He can feel the SHIELD badge tucked into her pocket, and he doesn’t care one whit.  That she has nothing to do with the march, that she’s likely here for him, is likewise irrelevant, because now his mind is focused on the Nazis just feet away.

“Disperse them.  Or I will.”  

He’d meant what he said, when he told Remy and Scott that the reason he was in New York was for recruitment;  it hadn’t been the whole truth, not by a long shot, but it hadn’t been a lie.  Lying to those who should, by rights, still be his teammates–his family–had always left an ashen taste on his tongue.

There’d been the girl in the magic shop.  The boy he’d found entirely accidentally huddled outside Grand Central.  The child in the cafe in Chinatown.  They’d all been easy.  But the girl today was harder to find–that bar-goer’s daughter from nearly a week ago.  She’d never appeared to be home, when he’d come round looking, though the second day when he broke into the apartment proved that she had been there as recently as that morning–there was a still-warm pot of coffee in the kitchen.  

 So he’d resolved to setting a day aside to wait for the young mutant, taking up shop in the little park across the street, feeling out periodically for any changes in the apartment. 

He’d been left alone for hours when a girl invited herself to sit on the park bench next to him, and her words immediately made Erik’s expression darken.  Had this been a trap? 

The metal of the arm rest curled around the girl’s wrist in a moment, Erik’s eyes snapping to her.  “Where’s the girl?”

Tracking down some mutants was difficult.  They covered their tracks, kept their heads down, did things so unassociated with their mutation that it was difficult to fathom why.  Some, though, practically laid out a road map.  Searching for the young mutant mage that the Brotherhood had heard about was easy when the girl worked in a magic shop.  Sofia Sinclair.

The girl was preoccupied with a book, when he slipped in the door, and he silently locked the door behind him to prevent any interruptions.  His recruitment efforts were never by force–he was never one to want unwilling soldiers.  She would be free to leave, if she wished.  But humans walking in on the sort of conversation he intended to have would be less than ideal.

The girl was murmuring to herself, and Erik felt a curl of familiar anger spike through his veins, though not directed at the young woman.

“The humans want us to be afraid.  Of ourselves and of them.  Both are unnecessary.  Your powers are yours to control, to learn.”

Erik was tired of young mutants being afraid of their own shadow because their capabilities were beyond that of the average population.  Special abilities were to be embraced, honed, used.  Mutants were genetically advanced, had been gifted by nature with abilities meant to push humanity forward.  Fear served no purpose but to make them weak.

“You should never be afraid of what you can do.”

It started with pens shaking on the tables when she walked past. As the years drew on, the teacher’s desk started moving on its legs when Lorna became irritated during class. The last time she let loose, she brought down a building, and the worst thing about it wasn’t even the officers that were trapped inside. The worst part was how easy it was. Since then, Lorna didn’t really need to try to manipulate any metal she wanted to – any metal she needed to in order to survive.

This was the first time she had attempted something on this scale, though – and the first time she felt any kind of resistance. The metal was still calling to her, singing, but it wasn’t pulling itself towards her. It wasn’t responding intuitively to her movements, even as she focused more intently, closing her eyes so she could just feel in the way that she found always helped in the past.

The tug of war let up immediately, suddenly, and Lorna opened her eyes just in time to see a trailer whip across the bridge, sending officers diving for cover, piling their cars up into a barricade. One swift movement, perfectly executed, and Lorna flashed back to the thousands of videos and news feeds she had poured over, taking in every little detail.

She knew before she saw him rising above them. She knew because it made sense, but also because she felt it, deep down in her gut. He landed in front of her, and Lorna dropped her hands to the side, the bridge groaning with the sudden release.

He looked just like she expected. He exuded a level of power that Lorna could only dream of, but there was also a part of her magnetism that called to his – they were poles apart, two sides of the coin. He said her name, and Lorna’s jaw clenched, taking a sudden sharp breath.

Dad? “If I knew it was you,” she said instead, crossing her arms against her chest, “I wouldn’t have got involved.” She looked at him for a long moment, then pulled her gaze away to glance at the commotion on the bridge. “Let me guess – they deserved it?”

Her expression tightened the moment he spoke, and he grimaced faintly.  He couldn’t say he didn’t deserve her bitterness, as much as he’d hoped for something else.  Twenty-two years, she’d been alive, and this was the first time in her memory that she had met him, had heard his voice in person.  

“They always deserve it,” he said, drily.  He took a half step forward, drawn as if by the very magnetism he controls.  “That was impressive, wresting control like that.  It took me a long time to master my powers enough to control something that size, let alone something already other another’s influence.”

And it was impressive.  She was twenty-two years old, and a force to be reckoned with in her own right.  He’d seen her learn to control her powers slowly over the years, through the trial and error all mutants had to go through.  He’d considered whether it would be kinder to take her, to be her father in the way that he’d tried to be to Anya.  To show her how to use her powers, himself.  

But he’d learned a lot of things, since Vinnitsa.  Amongst those:  that the sort of parenting that he so wanted was not something he would be capable of providing.  He had a mission, and he had a temperament that was not conducive to raising children, anymore.  

Better to ensure her safety from a distance.  Let her come into her own, with some guidance from afar, when she needed it.

“I know you’re angry with me.  And I understand why.  But I want you to know that I am proud of you.  Even if that means less than I wish it did.”

Something flashed across his face, and Wanda had to stop herself from taking a cursory glance into his mind to pinpoint the emotion. Years ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated. The teenager who lived on the streets and cared for no one but her twin brother, the girl who Hydra put into a cage, the young mutant Ultron convinced to join him… None of those versions of Wanda would have so much as paused before diving into Magneto’s mind, but that wasn’t her anymore. She was trying to be better, needed to be better. So, instead of prying into his thoughts, she listened. 

And she was surprised at what she heard.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said quietly, and she was. She had heard only the horror stories attached to Magneto’s name, a fact that was hardly surprising. People so rarely wanted to allow those they had deemed to be villains even an ounce of sympathy. Wanda knew that better than most — she’d been a villain, too, once upon a time. “It’s good that you found one another, though. Even in all that pain, you found love.” She thought, rather painfully, of Vision. Finding love through the pain didn’t make that pain go away, but… It made it a little easier to bear.

Magneto continued, and Wanda’s brow furrowed. You were adopted as a child. She started to shake her head, started to deny it, because she wasn’t, was she? Her parents were Marya and Django Maximoff. They were good people who died a tragic death. The best parts of Wanda came from them. But… She could see on Magneto’s face that he, at least, believed what he was saying. She didn’t need to look into his mind to understand that he thought he was telling her the truth.

“No,” she said softly, a little uncertain. “That’s — My brother and I were born in Sokovia. We aren’t…” She trailed off as she began to wrap her mind around the rest of his statement. Your mother fled you and your brother at birth, as she fled me…  Two mutant children whose powers could be as powerful as their father’s… The world seemed to close in around her and, now more than ever, Wanda needed her brother. She needed to turn to him, needed to ask his opinion, needed him to carry her a thousand miles away in the blink of an eye. But Pietro was gone, and Wanda had no place else to go. She had no one else to turn to. “What are you saying?” 

“Yes, you were born in Sokovia,” Erik confirmed, softly.  “But not to Marya Maximoff.  Your mother was Magda Lehnsherr.  And she was pregnant with you and your brother when she left me in Vinnitsa.”  Her distress at the revelation was written on her face, and he felt the pangs of the same distress he’d felt all those months ago when the Brotherhood scouts had returned from Sokovia with the same tale on their lips.  “She likely didn’t know, herself, for several months after she left.  Mutant pregnancies can sometimes follow an unusual timeline, especially if the mother is in distress.”

And Magda had indisputably been in distress--lost her child, witnessed her husband murder an entire village of people in retaliation, found out that both Erik and Anya had been mutants.  Monsters, in her eyes.  She had been terrified, despite that Erik would never have laid a hand on her, wouldn’t have harmed her if his own life had depended on it.  A fact, he realizes, that he ought to clarify to Wanda.  

“She didn’t run because I hurt her.  I never did, and would never have.”  He swallows around the lump that rises in his throat as the memories spring to mind.  “We had a daughter.  Anya, named after Magda’s mother.  She had just turned six a few weeks before.  Magda didn’t know, until after, but she was a mutant, too.  She could communicate with animals--she would talk about it, but Magda thought it was just childhood imagination.  I could tell, though--saw the animals respond to her when I would take her out into the woods to play.”  

His gaze had drifted off into the distance as he talked, but now he flicked his eyes back to Wanda, pausing in place.  “I’ve heard that telepathy is amongst your abilities.  I’ve been told my mind is difficult to look into, but if you’d like to try... she was your sister, after all.  And I’m sure you want to verify that I’m telling the truth.”  

When you had the power to manipulate metal, there were very few things on the planet that were secure.  Locking mechanisms were always metal, except for the one on the door of the cell in the Pentagon built specifically to contain him.  No, the trickier part was the human element, but even that was child’s play with the skill set Erik had at his disposal.  

Getting into Emma’s office had been easy.  Getting into her filing cabinet, even easier.  His feet are propped up on her desk when she comes in, thumbs skimming over the labels of the files in her desk as he leans back to read the labels.  Her entrance draws his gaze away, though he doesn’t close the drawer.  

“I think I just did, as it turns out.  Hello again, Emma.”  

His mental barriers are firmly up, already, his natural wariness of psionic manipulation only strengthened by the history between him and the telepaths he’s been closest to, over the years.  “Always such a frosty reception.  You don’t seem very happy to see me.”  

Despite years of seeing their Avengers on TV, despite seeing the X-Men interceding on their behalf (and getting far less credit than their human counterparts for the trouble), despite the fact that non-humans were slowly but steadily becoming a larger and larger part of the population– despite all this, humans still got terrified when someone’s powers slipped in public.  

It wasn’t even anything imminently dangerous; the boy looked to be no more than a child, scarcely old enough for his powers to begin manifesting, and all that had happened was a telekinetic pull of a piece of candy off of the register in the little cafe.  Of course, the fact that it was nothing but a candy moved by a child meant nothing–the cafe’s occupants erupted into chaos, and the parents, bewildered and clearly afraid, all but threw the candy back at the cashier and fled the cafe before anything more could happen to their child.  

The attempt of one of the patrons to file a police report led to his phone mysteriously getting fried, as Erik quietly sipped his coffee from the back corner–he hadn’t been recognized, yet, in this crappy little Starbucks on the border of Chinatown, and confrontations with the police who surely would know his face were something he’d like to have as few of as possible.  

For now.

The commentary from the woman the next table over, who looked equally unfazed, earned an amused scoff.  “They are, aren’t they?  So afraid and hateful of what they do not care to understand, as always.”  

It wasn’t a real threat. Scott would have known it, even without the smile. He’d seen Erik angry, seen him prepared to kill for what he believed in, but that wasn’t the man standing in front of him now. They weren’t on a battlefield, weren’t facing off about ideologies that almost lined up and motives that were just different enough to make them all butt heads. Scott smiled faintly in response to Erik’s statement, lifting his arms slightly as if jokingly inviting the man to, as he implied, try again. “Just know it’ll be really awkward when something kicks me back to life,” he replied, still all dry wit. Jean would have hated the joke, he knew. Charles would have hated the entire conversation. Neither of them were here now.

“You think every version of you out there has your same… personality?” The word was clearly a polite stand-in for something else, though Scott doubted Erik needed it spelled out. Still, there was a level of curiosity in the question, too. Scott had met another version of Jean in all this, seen a version of himself that looked more haunted than he ever hoped to be. The idea that people’s personalities and ideologies were universal constants was a lot more terrifying now than it had been a matter of weeks ago.

He huffed a quiet breath of air at Erik’s question, something that was almost a laugh. He should have been preaching. It was what Charles would have done, and Scott had always yearned to be a bit more like the best of the men who’d raised him, but he’d never quite managed it. He was far too much like the worse mentors of the bunch, he feared. “I’m a little too tired to manage a speech at this point,” he replied, “so let’s take a rain check.” Which begged the question… why had he followed Erik? To see if it was really him? To speak to him? “Guess I’m wondering what brings you to town.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but that was mostly because Scott didn’t know what the whole truth was.

Scott’s careful little pause around the word personality told Erik all he needed to know, but he didn’t so much as blink before the easy reply was falling from his lips.  “What, you mean passionate?  Goal-oriented?  Charming?  Confident?” he listed, leaning against the wall.  “Obviously.  And of course, they’d all have my dashing good looks.”  He opened his arms for emphasis, smirking, before letting the playfulness drop a bit as he gives the question due consideration.  \

“Do you think yours would not?  The options we have may be products of circumstance, but our choices are based on who we are.  You can argue about nature versus nurture if you’d like, but I have no doubt that at least in any universe where this,” he said, his Reichsmark coin coming up to spin in the air between them, “Exists, that version of me will be very much similar to myself.  And probably other versions, besides.”

Scott seemed to have to actually think about why he’d followed Erik, which was interesting.  His years of fighting with the X-Men should have meant that Scott was leery of approaching without backup, should have made him worried, but instead, the man seemed to have followed Erik without even considering it.  How typically Scott Summers.  

“Oh, you know me, Summers.  Planning world domination,” he deadpanned, tucking the coin away again.  “I just have some personal business to take care of.  Might bring a few mutants back to the Brotherhood with me, if they’re interested.  I’m not planning on bringing the city down around your ears, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.”